Passing On (7 page)

He had never shared his bed with a person. He had come near to it, once or twice, but a long time ago. Even those occasions, now, were dimmed; they were rosier, too, in recollection than in cold reality. He flinched from the thought of the people involved.

What was left was the memory of something else: his own feelings.

He had a vivid, and much earlier, memory of the first occasion on which he had realised that feelings were something to which a word was attached, and that they were recognised by others.

He was quite small — his head did not reach above the windowsill below which he stood — and through the open window came Helen’s voice, high-pitched in indignation, crying out to their mother ‘You’ve hurt his feelings! Why did you say that!’ And three things fused within his head: Dorothy’s derision of his ineptitude at something, what he felt in consequence, and the fact that Helen understood how he felt even though it hadn’t happened to her. Now that he knew what they were called, he realised also that he had them all the time, with kaleidoscopic intensity, and hence that others must do so too.

Their mother also, presumably, though in her case expressions of feeling more usually took the form of anger. Dorothy found outbursts of rage exhilarating; she would descend the next , morning blithe and invigorated, while everyone else crawled around punch-drunk from emotion. Louise was the only one who was a match for her. She learned in infancy to throw spirited tantrums in response to her mother’s anger, holding her breath and going blue in the face in a way that alarmed even Dorothy, who held that most childish ailments were put on. The tantrums were, of course, up to a point, but they were impressive all the same. When too old for tantrums, Louise resorted to argument and shouting matches. And, eventually, she left.

Helen and Edward, on the other hand, withdrew. Once they grew beyond being afraid of Dorothy’s temper, they dealt with it by evasion; they simply got out of the way whenever she brewed up. Living with her, they learned to treat her as the weather — elemental and inescapable.

Feelings also may be inescapable, Edward learned, but there are ways of cheating them. Of diverting them. Of hiding from them. Your own howls can be drowned out by the howls of the rest of the world, if you set about it properly. If you are naturally self-deprecating, and exceptionally under-endowed with egotism, the process comes almost naturally. Eventually you are exercised only about the atrocities around. Or so it can seem.

Helen also thought about the Barnacle geese that night, though with less intensity. The image of the plunging chicks lurked in her head, nagging, but it was other matters that kept her awake.

Feelings, of course — those maddening unquenchable onsets of disease. She reviewed Giles Carnaby’s visit and was aware of having existed, during that hour or so, on two different planes; at one level she had listened to Giles Carnaby and talked to Giles Carnaby, at some other level she had undergone strange physical and emotional experiences. She had gone hot and cold; she had felt slightly dizzy; she had been unable to take her eyes off him.

All this while discussing her mother’s testamentary arrangements.

She had not felt thus for roughly fifteen years and had not expected to do so ever again.

Edward — in so far as he thought about the matter — had always assumed that his sister was a virgin. He was wrong. Other people’s sexual lives are of course deeply mysterious; even so, Edward’s assumption was understandable. To his knowledge, she had had few abiding relationships with men and not many transient ones either. It was lack of opportunity as well as his knowledge of her character that made virginity seem likely.

In fact, Helen had first gone to bed with a man when she was twenty-three. She found the whole performance embarrassing but distinctly pleasurable. She quite liked him but was not in love with him, and recognised the experience as a purely sexual one. The man made vague suggestions about keeping in touch, and then vanished. Helen settled down wretchedly to await the outcome; she doubted if the correct precautions had been taken and knew that copulation leads, more often than not, to pregnancy.

She told no one and sat it out stoically. When, on the seventeenth day, her period arrived the relief and elation she felt were like a religious experience. Indeed, she went down on her knees beside her mother in church that Sunday and thanked the Lord, furtively and guiltily. She did not say to Him that she wouldn’t do it again because she did not expect the opportunity to arise. Nor did it, for quite a while.

Dorothy’s attitude to sex was one of withering contempt. She did not disapprove, she despised. The subject brought out in her a particular look — an expression of obstinate rejection, a clamping of the mouth, a hardening of the eye. Each time Helen saw it she thought of her father, and shivered for him.

Louise, at sixteen, discovered boys. The row with Dorothy and Louise’s flight to London and to art school was about sex rather more than about educational opportunity. Dorothy had opened the front door at the wrong moment late one evening and discovered Louise on the top step, in a fervent embrace with the publican’s son. The ensuing commotion kept everyone up till the small hours of the morning. ‘You’re disgusting!’ bawled Dorothy.

‘You’re a revolting little trollop, do you hear me?’ And Louise, incoherent and weeping but primed with righteous outrage, shouted back that Dorothy didn’t own her, that other people’s mothers didn’t … that every other teenager in the country … that this wasn’t the nineteenth century, for heaven’s sake!

Louise and Dorothy kept up a spasmodic battle about Louise’s sex-life until Louise married Tim, at which point Dorothy lost interest. Helen and Edward were an altogether simpler matter.

So far as Dorothy was concerned they had nothing to do with that sort of thing; they weren’t ‘silly’ like Louise. When Helen struck up friendships with men Dorothy moved into the offensive with a strategy of disparagement: ‘That poor young man — one wonders what he can possibly fetch up doing, with that voice and those looks.’ She was given to assessing people in terms of appearance. Girls were classified as pretty girls, nice girls and clever girls. Pretty was best; clever was worst. One could not help noting that Dorothy herself, in youth, could not have fallen into any of these categories, but then Dorothy always saw herself as apart. Not in any sense of superiority: simply as apart. There was her, and there was the rest of the world.

At first Helen was upset by Dorothy’s disparagement: ‘Just as well you’re prepared to put up with that chap’s acne — no one else would, I imagine.’ Why hasn’t anyone ever told him about his teeth?’ Then she ceased to bring her friends home, unless it was unavoidable. Eventually what Dorothy said no longer mattered.

During the long-ago weeks and months when it had seemed possible that she might be on the brink of a permanent alliance she explained to the man in question about her mother, and he appeared to understand. As it turned out, she need not have bothered.

The hall clock struck four. Edward and Helen, apart and awake, heard it. Edward remembered that he had to coach the remedial French class in a few hours’ time, always a taxing business; he turned over and made a resolute attempt to sleep.

Helen felt an odd little tingle of interest at the approach of the new day: another unusual sensation. In the Britches a cat yowled.

FOUR

‘Why are there ladders everywhere?’ said Edward.

‘Ron Paget’s men are mending the broken guttering.’

‘The house looks like some medieval siege. Do tell them to be careful of the martins’ nests.’

‘They’ve been told. Though I don’t see why the martins shouldn’t do some rebuilding. Here is Ron.’

Edward made a dive for the door, but too late. Ron Paget was already there.

‘Better to come round to the back, I thought, this time of day.

Don’t let me interrupt your tea. I heard Mr Glover’s car go past so I thought I’d just pop over and see the men are getting on all right. What about that window-frame — shall I have them see to that while they’re about it?’

‘I suppose they may as well,’ said Helen.

‘No problem.’ Ron’s glance slid around the kitchen. ‘The damp’s really got a hold in here, hasn’t it? You ever thought of having a proper damp course put in?’

‘Well …’ Helen began.

‘Tell you what — why don’t I have a look round later this week? Work out what we could do and how much it would set you back. Just to give you an idea. It’d be a biggish job, mind, but I’d make a special price — we’ve been neighbours a heck of a long time now and I had a soft spot for your mother.’

Helen and Edward looked at each other.

‘You leave it to me,’ said Ron. ‘I’ll suss out the damage and we can talk about it later.’ He turned sideways to look out into the garden. ‘Lovely place, this. Of course it’s bound to get out of hand, you’ve neither of you got the time to give to it. You know, if it was me I’d have a patio. Cut down on some of the grass — give you an area for sitting out — York stone paving, swing seat with an awning, very nice.’

The Glovers made no comment.

‘Yes. Well, of course you’ve gone rather more for the natural look, the way it is. Is that a yew hedge?’

believe it is,’ said Edward. ‘In theory, anyway.’

‘It needs the clippers taken to it, certainly. And beyond it there’s what you’d call the kitchen garden, right? Your mother did a bit in the veg line, I seem to remember.’

‘Not for quite a while,’ said Helen, wondering how to curtail all this. ‘Anyway, thanks very much, Mr Paget, we mustn’t keep you, the men seem to be. .

Ron took a few steps backwards and stared up at the house.

‘There’s a bit of re-pointing needs doing up there, too. We’ll see to that. And I tell you what, Miss Glover, I’ve had a thought.

About your garden. Our Gary’ll come in for a couple of hours, Saturday mornings.’

‘Gary?’ There were several Paget offspring. Gary must be the adolescent, from marriage number one.

‘He’s a big lad now. Fourteen. Muscles on him like nobody’s business. You can put him on to the rough work — dig over the vegetable garden, that sort of thing. Give him one fifty an hour, that’ll be quite enough. Maybe two quid by Christmas, if you think he’s worth it.’

‘But we don’t grow vegetables,’ said Edward.

‘I’m surprised, Mr Glover.’ Ron sounded quite censorious. ‘I thought everyone was doing their own veg these days. Nouvelle cuisine and all that. Mangetouts and yellow zucchini — that’s what I’m into this year. Fantastic. I’ll tell you the varieties to go for.’

The Glovers, intrigued by this unsuspected bent, gazed at him. Helen suddenly thought — well why not? It’s absurd the way we waste the garden. Never mind yellow whatsits but new potatoes would be nice. And he could clean up that old mower and do something about the grass. ‘All right. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.’

‘Oh,’ Edward began. ‘We’d never. .

‘Tell him to come on Saturday,’ said Helen.

Ron grinned. ‘Spot on, Miss Glover. You won’t regret it. And I’ll drop by myself and have a think about your damp. Cheerio for now.’

‘What was all that about?’ said Edward, when he had gone.

‘Falling over himself to be so helpful.’

The Britches, of course.’

‘He never gives up, does he? But do we really want this boy messing about?’

‘Might as well.’

Edward shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

Life was reasserting itself. Days had trundled by and it was now two weeks since the funeral. Helen, going into Dorothy’s room, saw that it had become dusty. Her presence was still loud and strong, but patchily so; there were occasional moments when she was not there at all, when it was possible to walk up the stairs or into the kitchen without expecting to see her. The black holes were becoming grey; Helen could see the substance of the house behind them, as though brick, stone and wood were extinguishing her mother.

She began to manifest herself in other ways.

‘At least get new curtains,’ said Louise. She had come down for the night, for purposes as yet unclear. ‘These are all of thirty years old. They’ve got moth and mildew. I’ve always hated them.

They’re the precise colour of pee.’

‘Mother made them.’

‘I know mother made them. That’s why the hems are uneven.

That’s why they’re such a nasty colour.’

Remnants, thought Helen, from a sale at Elliston & Cavell’s in Oxford, which is no more, subsumed into Debenham’s. I helped, if that is the right word, mother to buy the material. Stood about, in actual fact, while she yanked bales of stuff around and hectored shop assistants. I murmured things about the colour at the time. She pointed out that the fabric was cheap and serviceable.

And indeed here it is, still serving.

‘And another thing,’ said Louise. ‘The downstairs loo. Cloakroom, as mother called it. Something must be done about it — there are strata, quite literally strata, of defunct raincoats in there. There’s stuff of father’s. Do me a favour and clear it out.’

‘It’s part of the ambience,’ said Helen.

‘The what?’

‘This house feels so established.’

‘What’s all this about? Who’s been giving you that sort of crap?

Here …’ Louise rummaged in a carrier bag. ‘I brought a bottle of plonk. What are we eating? And where’s Edward? Don’t tell me he’s sloped off somewhere — I want to talk to both of you.

Tim’s at a weekend conference, so I damn well didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a break myself. God knows what I’ll find when I get back, but still.’

‘Edward’s in the Britches putting up some nest-boxes that came this morning, and we’re eating a sort of stew.’

‘Mail order nest-boxes!’ said Louise. ‘I don’t believe it!’ She wandered around the kitchen opening cupboards. ‘I hate these glasses — where are those green ones? Ah, there … You need a proper corkscrew — this kind is hopeless. Here — let’s take a drink through to the sitting room. It’s perishing in here.’

Settling into the corner of the sofa she continued, ‘It feels so peculiar here now. I keep expecting — oh God, I don’t know quite what I keep expecting. And I keep wishing I hadn’t fought with her so much. You know I kept trying, all this last year, to …